Those Moments
by jameshawking
Summary: He would find that contact that kept him sane, that fueled him to do everything he could for human, for galactic life.


Disclaimer: No pairings, no fight scenes. This is a character piece, fairly short, but fairly sad, I find. I certainly was sad, if determined, as I was writing this.

I, of course, own nothing of these characters other than my memories of them.

There are very good reasons why commanding officers don't mingle with their crew, which various species could all readily attest to. Turians, for example, literally built their ships around the premise that a commander is greater than, better than, separate from his crew. He was their leader, watching them, guiding them, which was the thought behind the specially-designed hulls and bridges of their ships; the commander is there, the crew is here. The two are not the same; they do not belong with one another. The design of hanar ships literally had their captain enclosed in a sphere of mass effect fields and kinetic barriers, crystal clear and hard to the touch, as though they were inside what would otherwise be called a snow globe, especially with the pellets of artificial food that hung around the field, small fish of various colors swimming around the tentacles of the hanar, avoiding it at all costs. There they would be protected the most, coddled in safety, isolated but perfectly visible, the shining luminescence brilliant as waves of light reflected its orders, commands, queries.

It seemed perfectly universal, just like greed and racism and fear, that the commander of a ship would be away from, other than those below him. With good reason, of course, but that scarcely made it any easier for those who were stuck in the lofty position. Each race seemed to deal with it in a different way, be it the flexibility of the turians or the simple, sadistic game that hanar would play with the fish inside their spheres, similar to a game of cat and mouse but far, far worse. Humans, or maybe it was just Shepard, blew off his steam, his frustration, his isolation, with a trip to some planet or another. A quick shuttle-ride down to the surface, whether inhabited or "empty" (there were so few actually empty planets in this galaxy) would usually end up with a few explosions, a bucket of blood and another ruined mercenary base.

He had nothing against mercenaries, of course. They did play a vital role in the galaxy when they were properly run. No government could protect every ship traversing the stars; no jail could hold every criminal (truth be told, he actually rather liked the idea of Purgatory, even if he did eventually blow it to hell). The logical string, though, that followed from what mercenaries did that he liked into what he didn't like, was that there was a necessary lack of morals, scruples. After all, if you're killing people tomorrow who you took a bullet for last week, what does some obnoxious, loud seven year old with bad teeth matter to you? Slavery, smuggling, illegal drugs (red sand was probably the most famous, but far from the worst thing out there for you) all flowed from a merc base, eventually. And once they did it caused little surprise when Shepard, usually just in passing, demolished it like a righteous deity.

If he'd known about the sects of human religions who were literally forming new religious dogma around him, he likely would have stopped.

Okay, maybe he wouldn't.

But he didn't do it to be worshiped and admired, even if he was. Grunt loved his fearless and cold slaughter of mercenaries, how his Battlemaster led his crew into a fight countless times and, usually, none of them were any worse for wear. Nine times out of ten when someone was injured, it was either the krogan, who didn't care about being hurt, or it was Shepard, trying to protect his crew that he'd put in danger, who followed him blindly, faithfully. That ferocity, that protectiveness, above all else as time passed, was what Urdnot Grunt, and even Wrex, had found the most inspiring in Shepard.

Legion too, found himself being amazed. The things that Shepard-Commander did defied all numbers, all matters of science and probability. The platform had decided that the chances of nobody dying during the Omega-4 Relay incident was an impossibility, the likelihood of it being so small and incomprehensible that even he didn't bother following it down to the true number. But not even one crewman had gotten an injury lasting longer than a week.

EDI was entirely incapable of explaining the impossibility to Legion, having reached his same conclusion weeks beforehand. Upon asking the Creator and Mordin Solus for an explanation, they both smiled and said, ver batim, "That's what he does."

But for all of that, Shepard had another reason why he always rushed off to protect his capable friends in the midst of a firefight. Garrus, predictably enough, had pieced it together years ago aboard the first Normandy, though he never told anyone. He, now more than before, understood why Shepard simply both couldn't be stopped and couldn't allow his team to be hurt to any real degree, why he was so intense about being there to literally take the bullet for his team.

It was, after all, both common practice and common sense to have a doctor examine a patient after they'd gotten hurt in the line of duty. Even if the wound was nothing that medi-gel couldn't fix, hadn't already fixed, a physical examination followed, be it an Alliance or a Cerberus vessel, which could mean only one thing.

It was what he lived for these days, beyond fighting the reapers, beyond saving the galaxy. When asked, that would always, always be his answer as to why he fought so hard, why he refused to surrender, but Garrus, and maybe only Garrus, had figured it out after the battle of Feros, when Chawkwas examined them all for signs of residual Thorian spores. And it wasn't anything sexual, it was beyond that, transcended that.

In her office, in any doctor's office, whether it was on the Citadel or on the Normandy, whether after Feros or after Akuze, the doctor's office was one place where he wasn't the one being followed anymore, where he wouldn't only be told what to do, relieved of that responsibility, but where he would also be touched.

Every doctor was entirely professional, and Shepard would make sure of that, but...in those moments of the warmth of fingers against a scar of his, whether old or newly-formed, he would find that contact that kept him sane, that fueled him to do everything he could for human, for galactic life.

They were the seconds that he lived for, that he fought for, where he could, for once

Be.


End file.
